The Blessed 'Cursed' Land Called Niger Delta

The Niger Delta region has often been described as the richest poor region of the world. It is an irony, but then it is a fact. It is the goose that lays the golden egg, but surrounded by rusty metals of despoilation from the exploration and production activities of multi-national oil companies, which have thoroughly ravaged the region and left it desolate and disconcerted. Fifty years down the road, since the first oil well was drilled, SONI DANIEL, who is on research studies at the Department of International Journalism, City University, London, recently visited Oloibiri, Bayelsa State, where Shell started its production operation in Nigeria, and below is excerpts of what he saw and heard...

News of the discovery of oil in the afternoon of August 3, 1956 heralded unprecedented celebration in Oloibiri, the sleepy riverine Nigerian community in the present Bayelsa State.
The then Anglo-Dutch oil company, Shell D'Arcy, which was granted the exclusive concession by the then British colonial administration in Nigeria to explore oil, reeled in the reverie of the moment.
As the natives conducted the expatriates round the free-flowing Otuegidi River, showcasing its rich potentials in aquatic resources and splendour, flourishing farmlands, thick forest stocks and, above all, crude oil, expectation was high among the people.
But, more than five decades down the line, the expectation has waned into despair, as nature's blessing in the womb of the land appears to have given birth to something of a curse.
Tales of woes now resonate in Oloibiri, made up of Otuegidi and Otuabagi communities in Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State in South Southern Nigeria.
They expected good life and ended up with penury. Their land has been devastated as a result of Shell's extractive activities. Today, hunger looms large in the land, as the people work as scavengers, scooping the forest and water for anything to eke out a living.
"They have succeeded in killing us slowly and leaving us with nothing to show for the wealth they extracted from our community," moans Chief Lawrence Enoch, head of the Otuegidi family, who spoke of the impact of Shell's operations in the area. Enoch was one of the community leaders that welcomed the Shell team to Oloibiri in 1953.
On the afternoon of Sunday, July 6, 2008, three other journalists and yours truly tried to access the community shortly on arrival at the same location where Shell workers landed and entered the community, but were confronted with the stark reality of the absence of development. There are neither roads nor the presence of other basic social amenities. Access in and out of the community is only possible by water.
On this day, no boat was in sight to convey the four-man team across the shallow dark coffee brown-coloured body of water.
After a long frustrating wait that seemed almost like an age, a man showed up with an offer to ferry the 'visitors' across the river in a tiny canoe that could barely accommodate two persons at a time. It was tempting to accept the offer, because if the opportunity was missed, no one knew when the next boat would show up.
If the experience during the short boat ride was full of suspense, what the four men discovered on arrival on the other side of the river, where some derelict water-logged houses dot the landscape, left them dump-founded.
A man clutching his three-year-old son, was rushing in our direction at the bank of the river. A few metres from where we were alighting from the boat, they made a detour to where the boat rider described as the community's 'toilet' - a ramshackle shack made of a contraption of sticks and planks suspended on a delicate dead tree trunk on the river bank. As both man and child did their thing, the faeces go straight into the same body of river that also doubles as the people's only source of drinking water. As if to authenticate the claim, just as we made our way towards the houses, a group of youths carrying buckets passed us on their way to fetch water from the same muddled river they defecate into. Not many from the community have seen the four walls of a university. The few who have the privilege are still languishing at home due to unemployment.
Isaac Evans, 35, who graduated with a third-class degree in Economics from the state-owned Niger Delta University (NDU), stays with his brother and sisters at the Otuegidi waterside, where fishing and other forms of subsistence are the only source of survival.
"We are ashamed of our status and we are not proud as landlords to Shell, because the only rewards we have to show for allowing the company to come and exploit oil in our area these years are tales of woes, pollution and environmental spoliation and devastation," Enoch claimed, frustration written all over his face.
The people have no idea when electricity, hospital and other essential amenities would come their way. Most of them have never seen an electric bulb. The sick members of the community always go through the gruelling experience of a three-hour journey by boat to Kolo Creek where the nearest government-run health facility is located.
"Most of our people die even before they can access medical facilities, because of the long distance to the hospital," laments Samuel Tarinyo, a retired teacher and native court member in Oloibiri, who was in Standard One when Shell came to the area in 1953.
Men, women, and children still live in squalor in Oloibiri. With no decent accommodation, majority are at the mercy and vagaries of environmental elements.
Their hygiene is poor, as flies and other vectors, like mosquitoes, roam the open hovels, sharing food and other edibles with the inhabitants. There is a permanent stench of staleness in the air around the communities.
But Precious Okolobo defended the actions of the company in the community.
Said he: "Shell stopped producing from Oloibiri field in 1977, but we have continued to implement development projects in the area. However, Shell cannot take over the role of government in the development of Oloibiri, or, indeed, any community in the Niger Delta."
Okolobo says although the company pays its taxes and royalties to the government of Nigeria regularly, it does not however decide how the money should be spent for the communities.
The sad tale of Oloibiri appears to be similar to those of other communities in the Niger Delta region. In Bomu, Gokana and Umuchem in Etche Local Government Area of Rivers State, where Shell also found oil in commercial scale in 1957, the people are like those that development has left behind.
Though the Niger Delta population of about 30 million may be the same as Saudi Arabia, their development indices are far apart. Life expectancy in the Middle East nation stands at 73 years for men and 78 for women while infant mortality averages 12 per 1,000. In the Niger Delta, life expectancy is shorter at 46.8.
Infant mortality stands at 105 per 1,000, while one in every five children in Nigeria dies before they reach the age of five. Poverty grips the Niger Delta like a timeless mirage. Seventy per cent of the people are said to live below $1 per day while Nigeria rakes in over $336 million daily from oil in the area.
Neither Sudan with a simmering war nor Angola, two oil-producing nations in Africa, has a poorer development outlook like Nigeria. While Angola, which earns $44 billion from oil, has a better per capita income of $5,600 in 2007, Nigeria ended with a per capita of $2,000 in 2007.
In 2007, Nigeria reaped $55 billion from oil exports. That placed it as the fourth oil revenue earner among Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries - Saudi Arabia earned $189 billion, United Arab Emirates (UAE) made $63 billion and Iran $57 billion.
"What is happening in the Niger Delta can aptly be described as genocide or ethnic cleansing because we have been forced to drink from the same source we defecate into. We have been bastardised by the people who rule over us," noted Charles Harry, president of the Ijaw Republican Assembly (IRA.)
Rather than bring fortune and peace, oil has continued to bring to the Ogoni people despicable reminders of blood, tears and sorrow. It was complaints against oil production by Shell that took the life of Kenule Saro-Wiwa, an environmentalist, and eight others in 1995, and it was oil that claimed many lives in Umuchem in 1990 and Odioma in 2001, all in the Niger Delta.
Yet, not much has changed in the way the oil companies do their business and handle the environment.
"That is one of the reasons we want to control our resources so that they can be better managed for the benefit of the Niger Delta people and Nigeria in general," says Felix Tuodolo, president of Ijaw National Congress (INC) for Europe and America.
Oil still sucks the land, leaving more money at the disposal of a few powerful persons in Nigeria to spend on ostentatious items while the majority from the oil-bearing communities and Nigeria languish in abject poverty. They rise early to till the oil-devastated land but get little to sustain themselves at the end of the day.
"It is sad that we produce oil, but live in squalor and poverty, with hunger as our permanent companion," says Agbam, community development chairman of Umuchem community in Rivers State.
"The condition of the Ogoni people remains as it was even before our martyrs were slain. Nothing has changed, apart from the fact that we can now freely assemble and speak out our minds," says Bari-ara Kpalap, MOSOP Information Officer.